


the beating, aching heart of the matter

by lovebeyondmeasure



Category: Cormoran Strike Series - Robert Galbraith
Genre: Arguing, Cormoran Strike is In Love with Robin Ellacott, F/M, I'll Walk Beside You: A Cormoran Strike Fic Exchange, Love Confessions, Love Confessions While Arguing, One Shot, Post-Lethal White, Prompt Fill, Robin Ellacott Is Almost Always Right
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-27
Updated: 2019-03-27
Packaged: 2019-12-18 17:03:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18254120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovebeyondmeasure/pseuds/lovebeyondmeasure
Summary: “Don’t,” said said, pointing at him. “Don’t play that game with me, I’m supposed to be your partner.”“Of course you’re my partner,” Cormoran replied. “There’s nothing ‘supposed’ about it, your name’s on the door as much as mine.”“Well, it doesn’t seem to be carrying a lot of weight, so pardon me for thinking that perhaps you’d forgotten!”





	the beating, aching heart of the matter

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by [moonlight_swicts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonlight_swicts/pseuds/moonlight_swicts) in the [StrikeFicExchange](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/StrikeFicExchange) collection. 



> **Prompt:**  
>  _Cormoran and Robin are in a fight, in the middle of the discussion one of them shouts "Because I'm in love with you"_
> 
> Sorry about how long this took! These two just wouldn't stop arguing and get to the good stuff! 
> 
> Thanks to moonlight_swicts for the amazing prompt! Confessions of love in the middle of an argument is my kryptonite, it's got me so weak... I hope you all enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it! Your comments and kudos have always and will always mean the world to me.

Robin did him the courtesy of waiting until Barclay was all the way down the stairs and out the door before rounding on him. 

“Alright, what was that all about, then?” She looked at him with the same intense, searching gaze that she usually used on clients. The look that hunted for answers, for tells, for more information than she assumed would be available verbally. He didn’t enjoy being on the other end of it.

“What was what?” he tried. He stood, going over to the kettle for the excuse to move away from her piercing eyes. 

“Don’t,” said said, pointing at him. “Don’t play that game with me, I’m supposed to be your partner.”

“Of course you’re my partner,” Cormoran replied. “There’s nothing ‘supposed’ about it, your name’s on the door as much as mine.”

“Well, it doesn’t seem to be carrying a lot of weight, so pardon me for thinking that perhaps you’d forgotten!”

Cormoran, his back to Robin as he rummaged out mugs, winced. Robin was angry, her voice laced with simmering fury an inch away from boiling over, and he couldn’t... blame her, not really.

He took a deep breath, bracing himself to meet her eye. 

The wounded look that greeted him knocked the breath out of him anyway. She wasn’t just upset, she was _hurt._

“I thought we were past this,” Robin said. “I thought we were finally, just, I don’t know… I thought you finally saw me like a real partner. But you’re still treating me like an assistant!”

“Robin, you know that’s not how I think of you,” Cormoran said weakly. 

“Isn’t it? Because the moment there’s another man in the room, suddenly I’m the one who’s going to be ‘coordinating the manouever from afar’ instead of being _part_ of it, and honestly, what else am I supposed to think?”

She stood, righteous fury coiled in her lithe frame. “You never want to me help with the hard work, the dirty work, the late-night shifts, the unpleasant marks.”

Cormoran knew that she was right. He _did_ try to keep the worst of it from her, but it wasn’t because he thought she couldn’t _handle_ it.

“That’s not… Robin, I’m just…” He didn’t know how to finish the sentence without making things worse for himself. 

“You’re just?” She arched an eyebrow at him, her arms crossed over her chest. He was sure that if he glanced down, her toe would be tapping. 

“I’m trying to make sure you don’t… burn yourself out,” he managed, and knew immediately it wasn’t the right thing to say. 

“Oh, is that so? Because I’m in _such_ danger of burning myself out, what with you insisting that I shouldn’t work on weekends as much as possible, or at night, and leaving me with all sorts of _taxing_ paperwork and billing and, and phone calls? Yes, I’m extremely overburdened! However shall I cope?”

Robin was working herself into a proper lather, eyes bright with anger. Cormoran looked away from her, his own defensiveness churning into a hard response in his stomach.

“We both know you’re better than I am at that sort of thing, don’t act like it’s some sort of conspiracy that I delegate tasks in the most efficient manner,” he bit out, working up his own temper. “You’re a better typist and you’ve got a good head for the bills, that’s hardly my fault!”

“Oh, it’s supposed to be a compliment, is it? That I’m better at being a secretary than a proper investigator?”

Cormoran blinked. That, then, was the beating, aching heart of the argument. She thought that he thought that she wasn’t completent. 

“No, you’re not!”

Robin looked at him, puzzled. He tried to think through his response, but it had become all tangled. 

“I mean to say, you were a good secretary, but you’re just as good if not better at investigative work than you are at… the secretarial tasks,” he fumbled out.

“Then why won’t you let me _be_ an investigator!” she snapped back. “And, for that matter, if we’re such equal partners, what’s with this business of you ‘letting’ me be anything? You shouldn’t be in a position to delegate anything, if we’re equals.”

“I’m still the senior partner,” Cormoran blustered. “I’ve been at this for a lot longer than you have.”

“Yes, how could I ever forget it,” Robin all but shouted. “Cormoran Strike, the senior partner, bestowing his wisdom upon me! Cormoran Strike, the great detective, allowing me to learn from him, just a bit behind and to the left!”

Behind him, the kettle came to an abrupt boil. Cormoran turned away from Robin, with her flushed cheeks and heaving chest, her tight little fists and her hard eyes, to turn it off. Behind him, he heard her sigh heavily. 

“I just don’t understand,” she said. “I _want_ more responsibility. I _want_ to take on more of the hard work, I’m asking, I’m all but begging for more than this, and you just shut me down, every time! I don’t understand what I’m doing wrong that you don’t trust me to do it!”

“It’s not that I don’t trust _you,_ ” Cormoran said, and that was enough.

“Oh,” Robin said. “That’s it, isn’t it? _You’re protecting_ me? From all the bad things in the world?”

He had no response to this that didn’t sound like a poor excuse. He closed his eyes as Robin picked up steam.

“I think we both know, don’t we, that I am pretty well acquainted with how horrible the world can be? I think I can handle it fine! I don’t need you ‘protecting’ me from it, thanks kindly! And frankly, the- the _arrogance,_ of it, that you think I need you to save me from how hard the work is and how terrible the world is! I just-! I don’t need you to treat me like a child!”

“I don’t- I don’t treat you like a child,” he protested, “that’s not-”

“Don’t you? Because I certainly don’t feel like an equal partner in this relationship!” Robin’s face was ablaze, fury and misery, and Cormoran couldn’t stand to look at her, at how he’d made her feel. This morphed quickly into anger, anger that she had made him feel this way; it he was only trying to _help_ her.

“You are a perfectly capable investigator, and I have never thought otherwise,” Cormoran said, the words crunching between his teeth. “But forgive me for wanting to spare you the worst parts of London, the disgusting people, the things that have to be done-”

“I want to do them!” Robin cried out. “I want to be able to do anything you can do! I want you to trust me to be able to do them, to handle them, as well as you can! I don’t want to be coddled, Cormoran! I’m not going to break!”

He could not resist glancing down at her arm, recalling with perfect clarity the night she’d ended up in hospital because he’d allowed her to roam about alone at night. 

She, of course, noticed his gaze flicker. 

“I would have thought that this,” she said, holding out her arm, yanking back her cardigan sleeve to bare the silvered scar. “Would _prove_ that I can handle things, but you still insist on acting as though I am made of glass and you and Andy and Sam and all the other men in the world will be safe where I’m not! I hate to break it to you, Cormoran, but you are exactly as human as I am!”

“I know that!” Cormoran fired back. “Jesus, Robin, I’ve only got one sodding leg, I know exactly how frail humans are!”

“Then why won’t you just trust me to handle things? Why do I have to beg you to treat me like a partner instead of secretary?” She was flushed and biting her lip, halfway to tears, holding herself together by sheer strength of will. “I’m not your temp anymore, I’m supposed to be your partner! Why won’t you just let me _be_ your partner? Why do you always push me away like this?”

Cormoran knew that he was in the wrong, that he was in fact guilty of all the charges she’d leveled at him, and hated it, hated all of it, all the circumstances and decisions leading to this moment, with Robin angry and yelling, with him unable to manage a real reason other than the awful truth. 

“Because I’m fucking in love with you, all right? So forgive me for wanting to keep you safe this time around, seeing as how I’ve done a shit job of it up til now! You can’t blame me for wanting to make sure you don’t get knifed or- or _worse_ when I can actually _do_ something about it-”

But Robin had gone still and silent, staring at him with wide eyes. Cormoran, with his unreasonably good memory, recalled what he’d said about ten seconds too late to do anything about it. 

“I mean-”

But he could think of nothing to say, because at the end of the day, he meant exactly what he’d said.

“Fuck,” he said finally, the word falling like a stone to land heavy at his feet. Foot. Dammit.

Robin was still staring at him, and he simply stood there, waiting for her to react. Finally, after what felt like an eternity but was probably only ten seconds, she opened her mouth again.

“What the _fuck,_ Cormoran?”

He flinched. 

“You can’t- I- you can’t just _say_ that, that’s not- it’s not-” She was sputtering, unable to form a coherent sentence, and Cormoran’s tiny flame of hope turned to smoke in his chest. Of course the idea of it upset her. Of course he shouldn’t have said anything. He’d fucked it all up now.

“I’m sorry,” he said, desperation coloring his voice, “I shouldn’t have said anything-”

“And _now_ you’re sorry, not because of anything you’ve done before, no, now you’re sorry because you’ve convinced yourself that you’re treating me like a child because of your _feelings_ about me,” Robin said, and Cormoran was going to get whiplash from the way she twisted things about against him. 

“No, that’s not it- I do have feelings- I mean-”

Robin was pale now, her flush drained away, and she seemed more… tense, more stiff, like a prey-animal caught in headlights. 

“No,” she said, “I can’t- I can’t listen to this, I’m not-”

Cormoran was at a loss as she grabbed up her handbag and tugged on her jacket. He’d dropped the functional equivalent of a grenade into the familiar waters of their relationship, and she was just going to leave?

“I’m going out,” she said, not looking at him. He opened his mouth, and she raised a quelling hand. “Don’t. You can’t- I can’t handle you right now. This is- no.”

“I’m sorry I said that,” Cormoran said as she walked to the door, “but I’m not lying, Robin, please-”

But it was too late; she was gone, clattering down the stairs faster than he could ever manage, and the slam of the front door was like the closing of a tomb. 

What the fuck had just happened? Cormoran stood in the office like a man in the crater from a bomb. It felt eerily like the last time he’d rowed with a woman he- _a woman he loved,_ might as well admit it to himself now that he’d yelled the bloody words right at the object of his affections. He’d exchanged verbal blows with Charlotte right here, and it had felt something like this. 

“Oh, Christ,” Cormoran said aloud, digging his knuckles in against his closed eyelids. “You cocked it all up, didn’t you, Strike.”

He had never intended to say a word about the feelings that had taken up unwelcome residence in his wizened old heart. He had, in point of fact, planned to never acknowledge them aloud, allow them to run their inevitable course, and continue on with life as it had been, because things had been better than he could remember them ever being and he wasn’t a _fool,_ he knew better than to fuck up a good thing. 

Well, he’d thought he knew better. Apparently he _was_ a fool, one whose mouth had the capacity to run away without him.

“Fuck,” he said again, because it seemed to sum everything up. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

He put his hand down on the counter behind him, and it brushed against the kettle, still hot. The bright lance of pain jolted through him, a new and different sort of shock to his system.

“Fuck!”

He ran his hand under the faucet, the cool water soothing the slight burn, and took stock of his options.

He could allow Robin to disappear for however long she needed to process what he’d said. This seemed like the most obvious answer… and yet, it also seemed wrong. She’d clearly misunderstood his (awful, terrible) admission of feelings, and if he allowed her to convince herself of her interpretation of things, it would only make things worse. He didn’t want to know how much worse this could be. 

He could call her, but he had no idea what to say. She probably wouldn’t pick up, anyway, and then he’d have to leave her a voicemail which would only become permanent evidence of his inability to maintain a normal, functional relationship with another human being. So that was on the table, but only just. 

His hand was growing numb beneath the flow of water, and he turned off the tap with a huff, shaking his hand to bring the feeling back. What the hell was he supposed to do?

“Fuck it!” he growled finally, reaching for his own coat. He might as well go after her. Face to face, they’d be able to have the rest of it out. Better to do it now, rather than letting it lurk and fester, right?

Reaching for the knob, he once more had a flash of memory, rushing out through this door after a woman. It had been the moment right before he’d met Robin, actually. He paused, caught in a flight of fancy that time might be repeating itself, that Robin might be just on the other side of the door once again, time looping back endlessly on itself. 

But when he opened the door, of course the landing was empty. No Robin, no Charlotte, only the ghosts of his past mistakes. 

He made his way down the stairs, stump aching with each jolting step, and cursed his landlord impotently again. It felt better to be mad at someone else rather than himself. 

Reaching the bottom of the stairs, he opened the door to the street gratefully, ready to return to level ground again. 

And there, on the other side of this door, was Robin. Her unexpected reappearance threw him backwards half a step.

“Oh,” she said, as surprised as he. “I wasn’t expecting-”

“I was just,” Cormoran started to say.

“I didn’t think you’d come after me,” Robin said.

“Well,” Cormoran said, “I did. I always do.”

“I suppose you do,” Robin said, looking up at him. She was on the street, and he was inside the door still, so the distance was further than it usually was. Cormoran didn’t like it; he appreciated being able to look her easily in the eye. 

“Do you want to-” Cormoran said, stepping back as if to invite her back in. “Or should I come- should we go?”

“I don’t know,” Robin said, head tilting back and to the side, thoughtful. “I don’t know where we go from here.”

“Literally, or figuratively?” Cormoran asked, trying to make a joke of it, trying to keep things from sinking irreparable into the ocean. 

“Both, I suppose,” Robin said. 

“Well,” Cormoran said, “I would say it depends on if you’d rather figure that out publically, or if you’d rather be able to throw things.”

“Throw things?” Robin looked appalled. “Why on earth would I need to throw things?”

Cormoran shrugged. “Charlotte sometimes liked to. Thought I’d give you the option.”

Robin huffed half of a laugh. “I don’t know if I appreciate the insinuation.”

“You two are nothing alike,” Cormoran said immediately, fervently. “That’s not at all what-”

“Take a breath,” Robin chided him. “It’s fine. Shut up.”

He immediately closed his mouth. The temper seemed to have gone out of her, he thought; Robin had been incandescent with the burn of her rage earlier, but now she was calm, collected. 

“I’m still quite angry with you,” she said, giving lie to his thoughts. “To be clear. We are going to finish that conversation at some point.”

“I didn’t think we wouldn’t,” Cormoran said. She nodded. 

“But right now, I think I only have one question for you, and I’m going to need the truth, all right?”

“Of course,” Cormoran said. “Only first, either come in or let me out, because I hate staring down at you like this.”

Robin looked up at him for a long moment, not moving, her clear eyes evaluating him. He blinked at her, waiting for her to move one way or the other. 

“What?” he asked. “What’s the question?”

Robin didn’t answer him; instead she stepped into the doorway, right into his space, forcing him to take another half-step backward to avoid having her pressed up against him.

“I think you’ve just answered what I needed to know,” Robin said, and he could feel her breath against his face, and she was _so close_ to him that he was going to-

“I thought you were going to ask me if I meant it,” he managed to say, his mouth gone dry. “And I was going to say that yes, of fucking course I did-”

But then her hands were on the lapels of his coat, and she was pulling him down to press her lips to his, and it was a bad kiss by nearly every metric- dry and awkward and close-lipped and unexpected. 

He never wanted it to end. 

“I know you meant it,” Robin whispered to his when she leaned back. “The way you said it, the way you looked _after_ you said it, of course you meant it.”

Cormoran looked down the scant inches to her face with a sort of dazed hunger. The whiplash did not seem to end, today.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and he couldn’t have said which of the things that had happened he was apologizing for. 

“For what?” she asked, but he was already leaning down, because that kiss had been worse than the accidental one in the car-park that he had never been able to stop thinking about, and he reached out to pull her close and kiss her properly, like she deserved, like he’d been wanting to for months now.

And it was decadent, kissing Robin. It was like drinking the finest malt whiskey, like waking up in a warm comfortable bed and feeling well-rested, like walking in through a front door and feeling like he’d come home. 

“I’m sorry,” he said again when their lips parted an interminable amount of time later. 

“I hope you’re not sorry for that,” Robin said, looking him in the eye. “Because if you are, then I really will throw things.”

“The only thing I’m sorry for when it comes to kissing you is not doing it sooner, or under better circumstances,” he said, before leaning in to kiss her again, for good measure, simply because he suddenly found that he could. And it was just as good that time as the last.

“I think,” Robin said when they parted again, “that you had better come buy me a drink.”

“Why’s that?” he asked.

“Because we have quite a bit to talk about,” she said, her hand leaving his lapel to brush gently across his chest. “And I find that I’m in need of refreshment.”

“I will buy you as much wine as you would like,” he said, moving his hand around her hip to the small of her back and guiding her out the door. “I will buy you enough wine to drown an army, if that’s what you want.”

“I do your books, Cormoran,” Robin said as he closed the door behind them. “I know for a fact that you don’t have that kind of money.”

He smiled back at her, and in a burst of gallantry, offered her an arm. She placed her bare left hand in the crook of his elbow, and the expression on her face as she looked up at him could have lit up the sky. 

“I can buy you up to three glasses of wine, and listen to whatever you have to say about my poor management skills without interrupting you for at least half an hour, will that suffice?” he said as they set off down street, falling easily into step. 

“That’s a good place to start, I think.”


End file.
